As the winter grew into early spring, the fame of the Children’s Home Meetings spread so rapidly that a larger audience-room became an imperative necessity. The churches began to inquire into the matter, and Margaret and Gilbert were beset with questions as to their creed and purpose. To all such they gave answer, “Our only creed is love, and our only purpose to help each other.”
“Too vague and indefinite; the structure will fall for lack of proper support. You ought at least to have a set of rules.”
“So we have,” replied Margaret, “but they spring from the need of the hour. We have order at our meetings because even disorderly natures find that to keep the peace best subserves the interest they feel in the all-pervading friendship we are seeking to establish. Beyond this we keep in sight, although not obtrusively, the axiom, if such it may be called, that the interest of one is the interest of all, and transversely, that the interest of all is the interest of one. When these simple truths have become the bone and sinew of belief and practice, then we may go a few steps farther as the way opens and light dawns.”
“You must have an ultimate line of procedure marked out—some plan as to its religious aspect, have you not?”
“We teach no so-called system of theology. Since atheists, infidels, deists, and trinitarians all meet upon the common ground that the civilized world has never beheld a grander epitome of what is called ‘living’ than that afforded by Jesus of Nazareth, we are content to forego modern complications of creeds and isms and establish among ourselves the fundamental truths taught by Jesus and, better yet, practised by Him. In doing this we think we shall better both man’s desires and surroundings. This idea, carried to its logical conclusion, is so far-reaching that inequalities of opportunity will fall away as if by magic and the now unceasing mutterings of discontent and strife will be one day relegated to a past age of unconscionable greed and injustice.”
“The church has been striving to accomplish this for eighteen hundred years. How can you expect, with no trained organization, to reach so beatific a state of society?”
“Because we shall not do as the church does and partition the goats from the sheep. We shall practice no exclusion, no worship of mammon, and shall acknowledge no caste except that of heart and brain. Personally I do not look beyond the good of the present hour; if that is rightfully spent the future will take care of itself. Indeed, our effort is much like guiding the first steps of the child; development must come with years and growth.”
“Well, you have a good motive and are an earnest advocate. We shall watch your progress with interest and wish you God-speed.”
These words were but a type of the interest the movement aroused among cultured and progressive thinkers who came to watch and listen and went away to ponder. Margaret and Gilbert, ever watchful of the trend of current thought, smiled hopefully at each other when, in the columns of their daily paper, they read the announcement of sermons on such topics as “The Era of Religious Harmony: What Signs of its Approach? What can we do to Hasten it?” “The Co-operative Principle in Morals.” “The Ethics of the Eight-hour Movement.” “Religious Communism.”
“The way is clearing for us,” said Margaret eagerly. “Thought is awake and we are only followers in the march of progress; we are not even forerunners.”
“And yet we are looked upon with suspicion by a great many well-meaning people. The conservative element in the church regards our ideas as subversive and dangerous.”
“So thought the money-changers in the temple when Jesus drove them out. What are we attempting to do, indeed, but re-establish the line of faith on which the church has built itself? And if in doing this we brush some of our plebeian, homespun ideas against a shocked silken-coated aristocratic culture, we may advance the price of homespun in the market, if nothing more. I am not afraid for our cause, since it is identical with everlasting truth.”
“Yes, and walks hand in hand with the heart-hungry and soul-begging mortal! Margaret, every time I stretch out my hand to one who has need of a friend, I feel that the grandeur of that Life which is enthroned in my conscience and teaches me to aspire to the highest development, is something infinitely greater than the same truth could have been as a mere abstraction. Jesus, the Nazarene, a man among men, makes possible all that is highest in human endeavor. A philosophy as old as the earliest time and as fundamentally true as God himself, that ‘Nobility arises from individual virtue and not from Abraham’s blood,’ and which Jesus made so potent when He walked the earth, needs now, as then, apostles who fear not to preach the truth. It underlies in all its simplicity every system of religion and statecraft, and yet it is ignored, brow-beaten, trampled under foot, and sneered at by those who seek power at the expense of all that is noblest in man. Oh, had I a thousand tongues I could not hurl these old truths at the world fast enough!”
Flushed and tremulous with feeling, Gilbert walked up and down the room, pouring out the flood of ideas which his work called into activity.
“Social well-being, industrial thrift, active consciences—let us place these in the corner-stone of the new structure. Religion has been ‘set apart’ too long; so long, indeed, that within its doors have crept the monsters of greed, gold-worship, and place-hunting, until its higher and holier meanings have been well-nigh crowded out. What, indeed, does man want of a religion that does not permeate every hope, desire, and action of life? We must bring it down from its idealized height and make it common as the air we breathe and the bread we eat. Then indeed may man, glancing upward, behold the dawn of a new and happier day!”
It was a day or two later that Herbert and Elsie were at the organ trying a new piece of music, which accidentally slipping from its rack fell behind the organ as it stood diagonally across the room. In rolling the organ out Elsie discovered a market basket full of groceries hidden in the corner.
“Where in the world did that basket come from, and what a strange place to put it!” cried Elsie in amazement. As she glanced at Herbert his flushed, uneasy face told the whole story.
“I am exceedingly obliged to your estimate of us as objects of charity!” she exclaimed, placing the basket in the middle of the room, and standing over it with the air of a queen of tragedy.
Herbert could not forbear a laugh, and there was a trifle of malice in the tone with which he said: “It seems to me there is a striking conflict of ideas between the democracy you preach and practice at the Children’s Home Meetings I hear so much about, and the aristocracy of pride you practice at home and toward those whom you ought to trust.”
Elsie winced under the home thrust, and with the quickness with which she could judge herself, answered contritely: “I know I am proud, Herbert; but I think it is an honorable pride. At least so I have always considered pride of character, and it always did hurt when anything struck at my independence. It isn’t as if I were sick, or incapable, or——”
“Exhibited a proper humility of spirit, instead of an obstinate and irritating pride,” interrupted Herbert.
“Am I irritating?” asked Elsie simply. “In what way?”
“In ever so many ways,” answered Herbert, evidently bent on fault-finding. “I seem to count but a cipher in your estimation beside some of these overmastering ideas of yours. If I exhibit a generous motive toward you, you smother it——”
“In kisses,” she cried, throwing her arms around his neck and proceeding to stop further explanation. “Herbert Lynn,” she added, drawing a long breath after the bit of violent exercise above recorded, “you’re a most ungrateful man! Now don’t bluster, for it won’t do one bit of good. I’m going to tell you something new. I love you more than any man in the world—that is, any I’ve met so far! Keep still! and I’m going to do an exceedingly generous action; I’m going to keep the groceries, and drop you a courtesy of the properly humble kind, and say, ‘Thank you kindly, sir! May heaven’s blessings shower——’ Why, what is the matter? You won’t even wait for the proper ending of the performance.”
Herbert shook himself loose from her detaining arm and walked to the window with a highly-offended air.
The laugh on Elsie’s lips and in her eyes died away, and after a moment’s pondering she followed him and said penitently: “Forgive me, Herbert; you know I love you more than——”
“What?” asked Herbert suspiciously.
“Money,” said Elsie sententiously.
“Bah!” exclaimed Herbert, angrily.
“Be calm, my friend! Now look me squarely in the eyes and behold your image reflected there as—I’m in earnest now—truly it is engraven on my heart, never to be erased as long as I live.”
Herbert’s reply was that speech of silence so eloquent to the ears of all lovers, and for the time being it bridged over the tide of their differences.
“Herbert,” said Elsie, when the silence had been effectively disposed of, “why do you never come to the Children’s Home Meetings?”
“In the first place, because I’ve never been asked, and in the second place, I’m not altogether in sympathy with the movement.”
A sudden pang shot through Elsie’s heart. “Please explain,” she said quietly.
“Well, probably my reasons are selfish and personal. I believe you know that I am somewhat generous at heart, that I am in the main humanity’s well-wisher, and that I am ever ready to relieve a specific case of distress; but I do not feel as if I wanted the girl who is to be my wife hand in glove with the riff-raff of society.”
“The riff-raff of society!” repeated Elsie wonderingly. “Who are they? How am I hand in glove with them?”
“Well, from what I hear,” answered Herbert uneasily, “you not only talk the gospel of love in its broadest sense to women of the vilest stamp, but you take their hands when it is pollution to touch them, you sit beside them and try to teach them truths they are too dulled and besotted to learn, and while you are, I must admit, an angel of light, you are but a mock for their vile tongues, and make, I fear, only questionable progress.”
“Go on,” said Elsie faintly as Herbert paused.
“There is a spirit of unrest and dissatisfaction abroad which I think your efforts will do much to incite instead of quell. I do not question your motives, but I do question your methods. Let them alone, Elsie, darling, and be content to shine at the hearthstone of those who love you. Intensify your light for me, instead of diffusing it until it is as thin and almost as cold as moonshine.”
There was no fire of playful fancy in the eyes that met Herbert’s as Elsie raised her head from his shoulder. He started as he saw the dull, cold hopelessness beneath the heavily-fringed eyelids.
“O Herbert! Herbert!” she cried despairingly. “Why do you ask this? Why did you ever learn to love me? I told you it was a mistake! I am one of these common people whom you despise. I can no more shut out my aspirations, hopes, dreams, and efforts for them than I can cut off my right hand. I have fed on these thoughts until they have become bone and sinew. You knew us, you knew our methods—why, oh, why did you learn to love me?”
“For the very reason that you are not one of the common people. I have, I think, told you several times before that I am not so blind I cannot tell a jewel regardless of its environment. I loved you despite education, surroundings, social pride, everything. I swept away every obstacle to call you mine, and I care nothing for the world’s verdict. I only want you for myself, queen of my heart and home, adored as its sovereign light, surrounded by all that the eye delights in or the heart can ask.”
“No, not all,” said Elsie quietly.
“What else?” asked Herbert eagerly. “You shall have everything that love or wealth can procure.”
“Can they buy a quiet conscience?”
Herbert shrank back. “I think you exaggerate the matter,” he said hastily. “I cannot see that the conscience is called into question.”
“I can,” said Elsie decidedly. “I had a heritage left me, here,” and she placed her hand upon her breast as she spoke, “and daily and hourly it tells me that if I selfishly lock up my God-given sympathies and turn away from the impulses of my better nature, I am committing a crime whose punishment is no less severe because eternity shall judge it.”
“Elsie! Elsie!” cried Herbert, awed into a great fear by the solemnity of her words, “you shall be the dispenser of charity as bounteous as you desire.”
“And yet be forbidden to soil my hands by contact with poverty or crime. No, we have too much of that sort of charity already. Besides, do you not see, Herbert, that there could be no happiness for us holding such opposite views as we do? Marriage is too holy to admit a division of sentiment and endeavor between husband and wife. Ah, I have been so weak to permit a love that I knew could only bring disaster!”
“It is only a few moments ago that you assured me you loved me for all time.”
“I do.”
“And yet you can throw me over for a disordered society that never will appreciate an iota of your sacrifice.”
“You are mistaken! The sacrifice appeases a deeper and holier feeling.”
“You have a very strange way of reasoning, it seems to me,” said Herbert bitterly. “You rob Peter to pay Paul with surprising alacrity.”
The look that Elsie turned upon him was so filled with agony that he cried remorsefully as he caught her hand and endeavored to draw her toward him: “Forgive me, Elsie, darling! I am not worthy of your love, I know; but I hunger so for it—I can’t give it up!”
Elsie drew back with the despairing cry, “We are so wide apart, Herbert.”
“We needn’t be if you would trust more to me and less to that hypersensitive soul of yours.”
A look of scorn not usual to Elsie’s face met Herbert’s appealing gaze. She rose to her feet and stood stiffly before him.
“You are centuries too late. My hypersensitive soul has a right to its own distinct existence. Your prescience should have told you how little I could strike palms with you in utter self-annihilation.”
A faint smile crossed Herbert’s face at Elsie’s grandiloquent words and air, but it died quickly away as she swept haughtily from the room and would not come back, though he called her repeatedly. Angrily he snatched his hat and left the house. Abused, insulted, hurt, misunderstood, he felt himself to be, and the more he reviewed the situation the more he felt that Elsie’s obstinacy, as he termed it, had raised an impassible barrier between them. Still his heart would not be stifled, and it was not till after dispatching a note to her and despairingly reading her answer—that marriage between people so distinctly at variance could never bring happiness—that he wholly lost hope. It was but the work of a few hours to make arrangements to join his sister abroad. At the last moment he dispatched a note to Elsie containing these words: “I have placed the sum of five thousand dollars in the C—— National Bank, subject to your call. If you love me as devotedly as I can assure you I shall ever cherish your memory, you cannot do less than make me happy by using it. You owe me this small recompense for the suffering that will be mine to the day of my death.”